Puddles Newsletter 3.1

The PUDDLES newsletter is devoted to education about providing daily fresh drinking water to animals. It is mailed free upon request to our customers.

From the Editor: Welcome to the fifth issue of PUDDLES, the newsletter about animals and fresh drinking water. We are pleased to note that more and more information is now available about fresh drinking water and especially with regard to supplies of water for animals. Many of the guides on attracting wild birds to the suburban backyard now give several pages to this issue and stress the importance of maintaining clean water containers.

Although some research has been done on the effects of various toxins in water supplies on different animal species, more needs to be done. We are publishing in this issue a starting bibliography which covers some of the issues in this subject area and discusses some of the research. Once again, as in previous issues of PUDDLES, we do a pocket review of the books that come to hand about what people are thinking about the environment. There are many new ideas here and these books are worthwhile reading.

New in this issue is PUDDLES watering products catalog. Here we have an initial selection of products to help you provide fresh drinking water for animals in an environmentally sound way. Please see page 3 for ordering information.

ATTENTION: Editors who receive PUDDLES: You can help by mentioning our PUDDLES in your free literature listings.

CHIRPS: On watering wild birds, the National Bird Feeding Society (NBS) has recently published the following suggestion to consumers in its Winter 1995 quarterly edition of The Bird’s Eye reView. In referring to its other publication , The Billboard, NBS wrote “NBS advised in the fall edition of The Billboard that you can pull the plug when the temperature plummets. The last thing birds need when it’s unusually cold is a hot bath, but reconnect your electric warmer when the temperatures go above 15 degrees.” In that same fall edition of The Billboard, NBS also advised, “A winter birdbath needs regular maintenance just like your feeders. Rinse the bath daily before you refill it, and scrub away any algae as soon as you see it developing.”

Birding Tip of the Month; Pete Dunne, organizer of the World Series of Birding, in Wild Bird, 9/3, March 1995, writes “All living things need water and birds are no exception… For birders, finding birds is often a simple matter of finding water.”

From Cornell Labs, be on alert for House Finch Disease. Contact your local wildlife department if you see eye infection on house finches.

Of Earth, Sun & Water “The 3 R’s of Water Conservation,” Consulting-Specifying Engineer, October 1994,18-24.

A good explanation of reclamation, recycling and reuse activities and strategies. Only 3.2% of the water on earth is fresh water and 75 percent of that is frozen in ice and glaciers. We can only manage about 1% of the water.

SOS stands for Save Our Streams, a new grade 1 to 12 curriculum “Hands on Save Our Streams” which teaches how students can work on a stream protection project. Write for information to IWLA, Isaac Walton League, 707 Conservation Lane, Gaithersburg, MD 20878-2983.

The American AntiVivisection Society (aavsonline@aol.com) reports in its Activator newsletter the following animal rights internet forums. ar-talk@cygnus.com is an open forum for all aspects of animal rights; ar-news@cygnus.com is an electronic bulletin board and snare@ indiana.edu, is a forum for students who are interested in animal rights. Also mentioned are vegan@maths.bath.ac.uk and vegan1% etemplevm.bitnet@pucc.princeton.edu, which are both discussion groups about vegetarianism.

The excellent newspaper Animal People is now on line. You can contact the editor at Anmlpeople@aol.com. The December 1994 issue had a article “Who Gets the Money” which listed from IRS 1993 data what percentage of the budget of different animal organizations goes to programs.

“The Green Net,” article by Mickey Mercier in E Magazine, January -February 1995, is worth ordering a back copy of the magazine to have in your library. It covers a variety of environmental Internet bulletin boards and services and explains the methods of access by your computer. Discussed are Econet, Envirolink, and The WELL as well as the commercial online services such as Prodigy and Compuserve.

“Traveling with Fido or Fluffy,” in Best Friends Magazine, May 1995, 801-644-2001, is a good article on travel facts. The author notes that taking water from home is helpful. “Unfamiliar water supplies can sometimes create stomach upset.” The article has a good bibliography with addresses for Traveling Pet Owners of America, Pets-R-Permitted Directory, Touring with Towser, Vacationing with your Pet!, and The Pets Allowed Directory.

Book ReviewsThe Ecological City Rutherford H. Platt, Rowan A. Rountree, Pamela C. Muick, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1994. This is a book about the city and the environment of the city. One of the conclusions drawn by the writers nicely sums up the book. “Finally, interaction between urbanists and natural scientists as reflected in this book, should become the norm rather than the exception as we collectively seek to respond to the challenges of living in a world whose population is more than half urban.” One recommendation we really liked was the suggestion that there be connectivity between patches of natural habitat-“isolated plots of ground are insufficient for many plants and animals”.

The Day Before America William H. MacLeish, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston 1994. This volume is about the evolution of the North American continent, how it developed over 18,000 years. He writes about the changes in habitat and those changes effect on animals and on humans. On of his interesting conclusions is “At the beginning of the American civil war humans and their animals accounted for something around 5% of global terrestrial life…By the middle of the next century the alliance (humans and their animals) may account for roughly 60% of …terrestrial animal life (excluding microorganisms) and 25 percent of all terrestrial plant life.”

The Economy of Nature William Ashworth, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1995. The book asks why the cost of living is rising while the quality of living is falling. It asks for answers from both the discipline of ecology and the discipline of economics. “The laws of ecology and the laws of economics are, at heart, the same set of laws.” The author suggests ways we can assess the cost of pollution. “The only viable solution,” he writes, “is a synthesis, an eco/nomics (ed. italics) that conforms human economies to the economy of the planet as a whole.”

Peterle’s book is the most helpful as it reviews the toxins, the agencies responsible for regulations and research, and looks at the effects of toxins on organisms. Ecotoxicology is helpful with experimental design for the ecosystem. Jeffries and Mills give a good background to the issues of studying the different types of water in our environment. Robbins is helpful on how water works as a nutrient for animals. All these books have extensive bibliographies for further research.

PUDDLES, 3/1, is published by Happy Bird Corporation, PO Box 86, Weston, MA 02493, manufacturer of Solar Sipper animal watering stations. Copyright Happy Bird Corp. 1995. Persons concerned about the availability of fresh drinking water for animals are eligible for a free subscription. PUDDLES may be read on the Internet at the Environmental Internet Connection E2B2.com.